Catholic Governor of Illinois plans to sign into law same-sex marriage, then hears the news about damaging tornadoes across Illinois after probably attending Sunday mass to hear this reading from Sunday's November 17, 2013 Gospel of Saint Luke:

When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,but it will not immediately be the end." Then he said to them,"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky."Before all this happens, however,they will seize and persecute you,they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name.

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary TimeLectionary: 159

. . . and from CNS News:

“We must pray for deliverance from this evil which has penetrated our state and our church,” the bishop, who testified against the measure before the state legislature in January, declared in a statement.Quinn, a Catholic, has announced he will sign the bill. “Marriage equality is coming to Illinois. I look forward to signing this landmark legislation on November 20 and celebrating a big step forward with the people of Illinois,” the governor said.

Let us now join Bishop of Springfield, Thomas Paproki in his prayers for deliverance from this evil and that the words of Sunday's Gospel and today's events may compel Catholic Governor Quinn to have a change of heart and choose to love God more than the zeitgeist.

4 comments:

I was unable to capture the comment made about how our salvation depends on how we are to treat one another, if I recall this correctly. I reply that yes, it is true, the Greatest Commandment is Love. God defines love and God desires it returned to Him and to one another. Because God is the Author of Love, then Love must be on His terms, not man's.

Man didn't create the sacred institution of traditional marriage, God did. Marriage was created by God and marriage is more than just about love. We know this because of what God has spoken to us through his representatives on earth. Like God chose Moses to represent Him in setting the Israelites free from the slavery bondage of Egypt's Pharoah, God speaks to us through the Church He has entrusted to His representatives in our midst. Pope Francis will not reverse what the Catholic Church teaches on homosexuality because he is God's representative, and God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Church has never taught inequality and God never desires inequality, therefore what the Church defines as marriage is, in God's eyes, not man's, equal and fair.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Illinois Tornado, Wednesday's Planned Same-Sex Mar...":

I have lived in Illinois for 34 years, my parents for 43 years, and I am an outspoken supporter of marriage equality for everyone, of a woman’s right to choose, and of the right for people to not believe in any God/s/ess or practice any religion as well as the right for people to believe and to practice the religion of their choice. I write many letters to the editor of my local paper and several essays for the www:religioustolerance.org website.

For you see it isn’t what religion a person follows or whether a person follows any religion what matters the most in this Life and for our salvation are our day to day actions, how we treat our fellow man all of them, especially those that are different from us whether because of their race or ethnicity or country of origin, their gender or sexual orientation, their beliefs or non-beliefs, their wealth or social status or educational level, AND about how we treat our planet it is the only one we have got.

In all my years here storms have gone around me, a tornado hit four miles north a few years ago, another 200 yards south, this last storm the town of Gifford that was hit so hard is a bit over an hour north of me. God has had plenty of opportunities to harm me IF he chose to do so.

What message is to be taken from this? Is there no God? Or does “God” support what I have to say and is keeping me safe so that I can continue to speak for the rights of everyone to be treated honorably and justly?

Let's get to the crux of the issue. You are assuming that equality, fairness and human rights are defined by mob rule or a decision of a magistrate. However, we know that God and God alone magistrates what is equal and fair.

I am also gleaning that you believe religious practitioners should be isolated into a box while the judges, governors, magistrates, and rulers dictate to us how we should live regardless of how it violates our convictions or how it violates even the natural law of God that most people, religious and nonreligious acknowledge as true, equal, and fair.

Rape, pederasty, pornography, slavery, and murder, etc. all wrong, but according to who? We know these things are evil because we are taught so and because these things are repulsive to the core of every human being. Take pornography - there are apparent victims, but there truly are victims who fall for pornography, both those who waste their energies, time, and interests in something vile, including child pornography. We also know that an adult father and adult daughter, like the two examples we have today in Australia and Germany, expecting their consentual sexual relationship to be accepted by society. We know in our core and in the teachings of the Church that such relationships are evil and are misguided. Incest is inherently wrong even if the two claim to be consenting adults "in complete love" with each other. The same is true with homosexuality. The couples may claim to be in love, but love alone doesn't justify any act, like incestual love doesn't justify a father having sex with his daughter. There is a line to draw and many homosexual activists even acknowledge that incest is evil - there are indeed lines to be drawn and they should be drawn before they reach the stage of approving same sex marriage.

On Purgatory

St. John Chrysostom (A.D. 392) - Homilies on First Corinthians 41:8:
"Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice [Job 1:5], why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them".

St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-386) - Sermons 172:2: "But by the prayers of the holy Church, and by the salvific sacrifice, and by the alms which are given for their spirits, there is no doubt that the dead are aided, that the Lord might deal more mercifully with them than their sins would deserve. The whole Church observes this practice which was handed down by the Fathers: that it prays for those who have died in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ"

St. Peter - Chief Apostle

Apostolic Succession of Church Authority

Clement of Rome (96-98 A.D.) - The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians--CHAP. XLIV.—THE ORDINANCES OF THE APOSTLES, THAT THERE MIGHT BE NO CONTENTION RESPECTING THE PRIESTLY OFFICE.
"They appointed those who have already been mentioned, and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry."

Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110) - Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2
"Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

St. Irenaeus (A.D. 180-199) - Against Heresies Book III, Chapter 3, 1 A Refutation of the Heretics, From the Fact That, in the Various Churches, a Perpetual Succession of Bishops was Kept Up.:
"For if the Apostles had known hidden mysteries which they taught to the elite secretly and apart from the rest, they would have handed them down especially to those very ones to whom they were committing the self-same Churches. For surely they wished all those and their successors to be perfect and without reproach, to whom they handed on their authority"

Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (A.D. 255-256) - Epistle LXXIV: To Cyprian, Against the Letter of Stephen 75:16
"Therefore, the power of forgiving sins was given to the Apostles and to the Churches which these men, sent by Christ, established; and to the bishops who succeeded them by being ordained in their place"

The Early Fathers believed Holy Communion was the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 151) - First Apology, CHAP. LXVI.—OF THE EUCHARIST.:
"the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus."

Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 350) - Catechetical Lectures 19:7, First Lecture on the Mysteries:
"The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ"

St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 411) - Sermons 227:
"That bread which you see on the altar having been sanctified by the word of God is the body of Christ, That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ"

The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

St. Jerome (A.D. 340-420)
Against Helvidius. The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary .21: "The conclusion is that he who was thought worthy to be called father of the Lord, remained a virgin."

.19: "I assert what has already been proved from the Gospel—that he spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary, but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship not by nature."

Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 354) - Commentary on Matthew 1:4"If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary's sons and not those taken from Joseph's former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, "Woman, behold your son," and to John, "Behold your mother" [John 19:26-27], as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate."

The French reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) also up held the perpetual virginity of Mary, as did the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), who wrote:
"I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin." (Zwingli Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, Berlin, 1905, v. 1, p. 424.)

Meet the Real Private Ryan

Unam Ecclesiam

From the Credo - Latin for "I believe" - the Nicene Creed prayed during the Latin Mass.

The Credo

The Nicene Creed—also known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed—was composed and refined during the ecumenical Councils of Nicea and Constantinople in the early fourth century; these councils defended the true nature of Jesus against heresies of the time. This Nicene Creed (from the Latin word credo, “I believe”) declares that Jesus was indeed both true God and true man.

All the people join in chanting the Credo in the Gregorian simple tone.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages; God from God, light of light, true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial with the Father, by Whom all things were made.

He was crucified also for us, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And the third day he arose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father: